Earlier this week, Google leaked some of its unannounced Nest security cameras on the Google store. However, it was unclear whether the products were intentionally released or not. On Thursday, the company officially announced a whole line-up of its next-generation Nest Cams and Doorbell, in an attempt to offer more security and privacy to its users.
Unified design
The four latest offerings from Google are – Nest Cam Battery, the new wired Nest Cam, Nest Cam with floodlight, and Nest Doorbell with battery.
The design of the Nest devices looks similar to previous Nest products. However, the company has chosen softer edge and muted color palettes meant to blend in, not stand out.
“When designing our new products, we drew design inspiration from lighting and architecture to create products that look great together and in lots of different settings,” says Google.
Introducing battery-powered Nest devices
According to Google, the battery-powered Nest devices offer flexibility over the installation location. “Battery technology allows you to install Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell nearly anywhere in your home — not just where there’s a power outlet or existing doorbell wires,” says Sophie Le Guen, Director of Product Management.
Google Nest Cam (Battery-powered)
The battery-powered Nest Cam has an IP54 weather-resistance rating, which can handle both splashes (from rains) and dirt as well. It has an internal battery which the company claims lasts up to three months between charges with typical usage. Having said that, it has a wiring option as well. The camera records at 1080p at 30 fps with an aspect ratio of 16:9.
Further, there is a magnetic mount that lets users adjust or remove to charge. It’s worth mentioning that the mount has been tested to withstand storm-force winds. There’s also an anti-theft mount that tethers your Nest Cam to the magnetic mount for extra security.
Google Nest Doorbell (Battery-powered)
Google also launched its first battery-powered Nest Doorbell. As per the company’s claims, the internal battery can last about 2.5 months before charging it fully. Furthermore, it is equipped with a 960×1280 resolution camera with a 145-degree field of view, which allows users to see visitors from head to toe and packages as close as eight inches away from your door.
Both the Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell come equipped with night vision, 6x zoom, and HDR to give crisp and brighter images. It retails at €199.99.
Google Nest Cam with floodlight
This is the costliest of the lot at $279.99 (approx €237). This is a device basically a NestCam attached with a 2400 lumen floodlight. It doesn’t have a battery option, since it requires permanent power. It also features an IP65 weather-resistance rating. Like other Nest devices, it also uses ML, meaning it gets activated when it detects a person or vehicle.
Google Nest Cam Indoor
Nest Cam Indoor is the cheapest of the lot at $99.99 (approx €84). This is a trimmed-down version of Nest Cam (Battery), which lacks battery, weather sealing, but uses the same camera and intelligence feature.
Uses Tensor Processing Unit
Google says the new models’ cameras and doorbells can detect people, animals, packages, and vehicles and provide specific alerts for each of them without the need for cloud processing. The camera also uses a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), which allows the device algorithm to run on twice as many pixels and at twice the frame rate of previous Nest Cams.
“Building a camera that uses ML to recognise objects requires showing the ML model millions of images first. Our new Nest Cameras and Doorbells have been trained on 40 million images to accommodate lots of different environments and lighting conditions. Thanks to a cutting-edge TPU chip, our new cameras run an ML model up to 7.5 times per second, so reliability and accuracy are even better,” says Google in its official blog.
Local storage fallback option
In case of a power or Wi-Fi outage, Nest Doorbell, both Nest Cam (battery) and Nest Cam with floodlight have local storage fallback. Meaning the devices can record up to one hour of events on-device (about a week’s worth of events).
Nest Cam (wired) also records on-device if your Wi-Fi is down. When service returns, the devices will upload your events to the cloud, so you can review what happened.
Pricing
The battery-powered Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell will be available for $179.99 (approx €152) each and go on sale on August 24.
The wired Nest Cam will retail for $99.99 (approx €84), and the Nest Cam with floodlight will be $279.99 (approx €237).
